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David Cach’s TorRed 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat beat out a field of nominees to win Hellcat of the Month on the SRT Hellcat Facebook page, no small feat among a community full of 707-horsepower Challengers. Behind that community vote sits genuine engineering history, the first factory-supercharged HEMI Dodge ever built. Read on to find out what actually made the Hellcat program possible.
Roadster Shop took a 1967 Chevelle that looks period-correct from fifteen feet away and hid a 680-horsepower supercharged LS, a custom Fast Track chassis, and a six-speed manual underneath it. The build keeps its original-style interior and chrome trim intact, proving a genuine pro touring monster does not have to look like one. Read on to find out what’s really under that Onyx Black paint.
Rick Hendrick, a NASCAR team owner famous for collecting VIN 001 of practically every major GM performance car, won the very first customer-spec Camaro ZL1 1LE at a Barrett-Jackson charity auction in Palm Beach. His $250,000 bid went entirely to the United Way rather than to Chevrolet. Read on to find out what made this particular ZL1 1LE the fastest production Camaro Chevrolet had built to that point.
This burgundy 1976 Ford Torino made local headlines after being stolen from a driveway, but the real story is what it represents: the final model year Ford ever built a car under the Torino name before renaming the whole lineup LTD II for 1977. Only 193,096 were built that year. Here is what made the Torino’s last stand worth remembering.
Getting the right drag wheels onto a modern muscle car isn’t as simple as it was on a classic Chevelle or Mustang, and that fitment gap is exactly what Race Star built its business around. From a single wheel design launched in 2009 to a catalog partnered with NHRA Pro Stock and Pro Mod racers, here’s how the company earned its spot on serious drag cars.
The Dodge Challenger Hellcat’s supercharged 707-horsepower engine turned nearly every drag strip in the country into an unofficial record chase. Racers like Jason Epling and the HHP-built TopCat pushed the factory-based combination into the 7-second and then 8-second range within a couple of years of its 2015 launch. Read on to find out just how far the same basic engine architecture eventually went.
Bob Welling served as a Marine in Vietnam, came home a died-in-the-wool Chevy guy, and still ended up chasing down a piece of 1968 Mopar history decades later. What started as a simple fix for an engine rattle turned into a full supercharged Hemi build — one so powerful that hitting the throttle at highway speed sends the rear end sideways. Read on to find out how a tribute to Dodge’s rarest factory drag cars became Bob’s daily street cruiser.
When Fiat Chrysler finally attached a price tag to the Durango SRT, the 475-horsepower, 12.9-second-quarter-mile three-row SUV suddenly looked less like an expensive halo vehicle and more like a genuine bargain. Executive Tim Kuniskis called it America’s fastest SUV, and the numbers backed up the claim in ways few family haulers had ever matched. Read on to find out exactly what the sticker included, and how Dodge justified putting Hellcat-adjacent performance into a school-run vehicle.
Dodge’s Demon shipped on genuine drag radial tires straight from the factory, a first for any production street car, but those tires were too wide for the main assembly line to handle. Read on to find out how Dodge solved a manufacturing problem nobody had ever faced before, and why owning one comes with a strange winter-storage rule.
Dodge’s teaser campaign for the 2018 Challenger SRT Demon leaned entirely on math instead of marketing hype, previewing a launch force over 35 percent higher than the already-brutal Hellcat. With 840 horsepower on race fuel, a one-seat factory configuration, and only 3,000 units built, the Demon turned out to be one of the most deliberately extreme muscle cars Detroit has ever sold. Read on for the numbers behind the teaser.
Trans Am Worldwide is building only fifty examples of this new Super Duty 455 Trans Am, reviving a Pontiac nameplate the company itself hasn’t touched since 2010. This behind-the-scenes look at the design process shows exactly what it takes to recreate a legendary performance car without the original automaker’s backing. The comments are full of Pontiac loyalists still hoping for more. Watch the story behind one of the rarest new Trans Ams ever built.
Nancy and Bob Dunbar’s original-owner 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge carries more than just decades of careful care — its bright Carousel Red paint exists because of a General Motors turf war between Pontiac and Chevrolet that project manager John DeLorean simply refused to lose. Only the first roughly 2,000 Judges built that year wore this exact shade before Pontiac expanded the color palette. Read on to find out how a color dispute shaped one of Pontiac’s most recognizable muscle cars.
Rear-wheel drive and snow have never gotten along, and every muscle car owner has learned to accept that. Dodge decided the Challenger didn’t have to follow that rule and built the segment’s first factory all-wheel-drive system instead. Here’s how the AWD Challenger GT actually decides when to send power to all four corners, and why it’s still a real muscle car underneath.
The Hellcat gets all the attention in Challenger quarter-mile conversations, but the quickest Challengers running the street right now are not wearing a supercharger badge at all. Owner Todd Barber’s twin-turbo R/T runs mid-8-second quarter miles while remaining fully street legal, tagged, and insured. Read on to find out what’s hiding under a hood that looks completely stock.
Chevrolet has never handed out the ZL1 badge lightly. Fifty years after 69 all-aluminum COPO Camaros wore it first, the name returned on a 650-horsepower supercharged monster that hits 198 mph and borrows launch control straight from the Corvette Z06. Read on to see what earns a Camaro the right to wear that name.